Bradley Manning

Private Bradley E. Manning is the U.S. Army intelligence analyst who is suspected of disclosing more than 260,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, plus over 90,000 intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan and a video of a military helicopter attack to the web site Wikileaks, a Web site that specializes in making secret information public. Wikileaks posted the war reports in August 2010, after sharing them with the New York Times and several other newspapers. Wikileaks began disclosing the thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables in late November, 2010. Private Manning served with the Second Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division in Baghdad. Private Manning disclosed a computer hacker named Adrian Lamo that he had taken the cables and other information, and Lamo reported Manning to the U.S. Government. Private Manning was subsequently arrested, charge with illegally leaking classified information, and as of December, 2010, was being held in solitary confinement at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia.

As of December 15, 2010, Manning had been imprisoned for seven months without having been convicted of any crime.

According to what is considered a thorough and definitive profile of Manning published in TIME magazine, "He appears to have leaked the Collateral Murder video, in which American soldiers in an Apache helicopter gleefully gun down a group of innocent men, including a Reuters photojournalist and his driver, killing 16 and sending two children to the hospital, a video of the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan, in which as many as 140 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a U.S. attack on a suspected military compound, a cache of nearly 100,000 field reports from Afghanistan, known popularly as the Afghan War logs, about 260,000 diplomatic cables and a set of as many as half a million documents relating to the Iraq war that, even on their own, likely constitute the biggest leak of military secrets in history."

Why Manning decided to disclose U.S. secrets
In edited chat logs published by Wired.com, Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question U.S. government activities. Manning told Salon that he was instructed to work on a case of Iraqi "insurgents" who had been detained for distributing so-called "insurgent" literature. Manning took the literature in question and had it translated, only to discover that it was nothing more than "a scholarly critique against [Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki." Manning wrote in a communication:

i had an interpreter read it for me ... and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet ... i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on ... he didn’t want to hear any of it... he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees ...

i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth ... but that was a point where i was a *part* of something ... i was actively involved in something that i was completely against ...

Manning further explained (to Lamo) why he never considered selling this classified information he had obtained to a foreign nation for substantial profit or secretly transmitting it to foreign powers, as he easily could have done:

Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious-- i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?

Lamo: why didn’t you?

Manning: because it's public data

Lamo: i mean, the cables

Manning: it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge - if its out in the open… it should be a public good.

Sourcewatch resources

 * Wikileaks

External resources

 * CourageToResist.org, a Bradley Manning Defense Fund
 * StandWithBrad.org, a defense fund and portal to support Bradley Manning and advance the issue of government transparency.
 * Max Abbott Harsh Treament of Wikileaks' Bradley Manning Prompts Firing, PRWatch.org, March 23, 2011